


Stolen

by crackleviolet



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 12:42:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20866424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackleviolet/pseuds/crackleviolet
Summary: Dimitri used to dream of battlefields...





	Stolen

**Author's Note:**

> This is ROUGH, I’m not gonna lie. I wrote it in bits and pieces during my morning commute. It’s based on my thoughts and feelings about the scene where Byleth first sees Dimitri after the time-skip, since we never get to see his point of view.

Dimitri used to dream of battlefields.

He’s not sure what it says about him that his mind, when left to wander, is most comfortable at war. He is soothed by the monsters in his own imagination and only sleeps comfortably with a knife under his pillow.

During the fall of Garreg Mach, he wonders if he’s dreaming, barely hearing the screams around him and reaching for his lance out of instinct and little else. He is numb to the fire and destruction and does not return to his senses until he’s tossed into a cell.

Only then does he resist it; throwing his body at the bars like an angry tiger. He does not want to be left alone in the silence; cannot stand the idea of being left in the dark. The calm and quiet leaves him thinking of corpses; it fills his nose with the smell of smoke and burning bodies.He does not sleep there unless he can help it. He paces every corner of his cell in the hope that sunlight might burn through the cracks. It’s almost cruel that the chaos of his escape is the closest he has ever felt to home. 

It’s winter when he returns to Garreg Mach and the monastery is blanketed in a thick layer of snow. He glances back at his footsteps in the ice, all too aware that he walks alone.

He remembers it as he walks through the empty halls, dodging rubble and bodies on the way. In his imagination the monastery is caught in an eternal summer: Ashe sitting on a tree branch and dropping apples into Mercedes’ basket; Sylvain whispering sweet nothings into a different girl’s ear to the one the day before, only to be yanked away the ear by an increasingly frustrated Ingrid; Felix begrudgingly carrying a pile of books from the library with Annette in tow; Dedue kneeling on the floor of the greenhouse and tending to his Duscur flowers.

Ashe’s tree is gone now; chopped for firewood well over a year ago. Sylvain’s makeshift lover’s corner is nothing more than rubble. The library was swallowed up in flames and its heavy tomes left in tatters where they’ve survived at all. Dedue’s Duscur flowers are overgrown.

He remembers the Professor sleeping in the library, the focussed expression on her face as she fished by sunset. He remembers the way she pored over heavy books, familiarising herself with magic and cavalry techniques so that she might better instruct her students.

It goes without saying that the Professor is not there either, a gaping void in what had once been his home. He doesn’t know where she went and that makes it worse. 

Only when he’s standing inside of the ruined goddess tower does he realise he’s been searching for her. If he’s completely honest with himself, he’s been searching for her since the invasion. He craned his neck and peered through the bars of his cell, searching the faces of every other prisoner in the hopes that one of them would be Byleth. He expected her to be there when he escaped the darkness at the cost of Dedue’s life; an echo of the moment she split the sky. He wishes now that he had told her the truth about his feelings when it mattered. He wishes he hadn’t cracked a joke for fear of rejection.

Not for the first time in his life, he laments his stolen future. It’s easier to think of it as stolen by somebody else than lost through his own neglect.

His demons have always had faces, but now they have claws and he feels them break the skin every time he wanders the ruined halls. They whisper in his ear as he lingers on the cusp of sleep, reminding him of everything he could have done differently.

Three months after his return, he catches a thief red handed. They’re little more than a boy-as young as he was when his father took his last breath- but he cannot see beyond what they represent. They’re only holding a silver plate, but it might as well have been his still beating heart. It’s not even his plate but the idea of losing something else fills him with rage.

He doesn’t feel remorse until later; too focused on the Professor’s sleeping form and Dudue’s Duscur flowers to hold back. He watches the light fade from the thief's eyes as he once did autumn sunsets, cutting into him over and over to silence the crueler voices in his mind.

If he can save this plate, he isn’t worthless.

If he can fix this, it isn’t too late. 

The other Blue Lions are stolen and might be returned if he cuts the throats of enough thieves. 

They might come back if they know he’s looking for them.

He knows it’s ridiculous. He’s had dark thoughts before but this frightens even him. He can’t escape the smell of blood, can’t stop himself from taking a perverse sort of pleasure in smearing strangers’ blood across the halls. He tells each and every one of them that they’re failures as they drift away; they’re beasts and worthless and deserving of far worse. They stole away his endless summer.

He’s sure he remembers them cutting down Ashe’s apple tree. Weren’t they the ones who burned the library? The Professor is gone now and they’re the ones to blame.

He used to dream of battlefields, but now he dreams of a stolen life- a past, present and future he doesn’t belong in anymore. He no longer recognises himself in the beloved king he wanted so much to be, doesn’t want to tarnish the throne and his birthright.

That Dimitri would be frightened of him, he’s sure and that Byleth would be disgusted. 

He’s disappointed every time he wakes up, wanting nothing more than to slip away in his sleep, even though he’s well aware that such a gentle fate is more than he deserves. 

It’s strangely fitting when he hears her footsteps across the stone floor only when he is content to die; one last kiss from an angel before his descent into hell.

Byleth looks the same, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. The sky behind her is the perfect shade of peach and leaves a golden halo in her hair and he stares at the hand she extends, taking note of the calluses that litter her palms. 

She doesn’t have the delicate hands of a story book maiden, but he’s always believed that to be one of her finer qualities. Even so, he hesitates before giving her his own. Surely she can see the blood stains and broken lives smeared across it. She’s not real, yet the guilt overrides his senses nonetheless. 

Right now she is a goddess in all but name and he is not the one she came here to save. 

He takes her hand, if nothing else for the fact that it’s so warm in his. For a moment, even temporarily, she’s real and returned to him and it silences his mind. 

“I should have known,” he says aloud, his voice an unfamiliar rasp, “that one day you’d haunt me as well.”


End file.
